


gravedigger, gravedigger

by haloud



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, post-1x13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-10-01 20:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20401810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud
Summary: They inter Max on a Thursday. No one calls it a funeral, but Michael lights a candle all the same.





	gravedigger, gravedigger

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is not for redistribution without express permission.

They inter Max on a Thursday. No one calls it a funeral, but Michael lights a candle all the same.

Michael goes down, after, down the ladder and into his lab, that in the halogen salvage-light looks dim and pathetic, more tawdry and unreal than anything the UFO Emporium might parade before gaggles of wide-eyed tourists. Max stays above, safe and sleeping, and the sleep is all the same—before rebirth, after death, swathed in silver and gentle, glowing gold. And up higher, higher still, among the invisible atmosphere, there is his mother.

From top to bottom, there is death, there is death, and there is Michael.

And Michael stands still, the weight of the world pressing in from all sides, until he crosses the room in long strides and casts aside the tarp that covers the console. It shimmers to greet him, like it always does. At eighteen, that automated acknowledgement felt like a tacit confirmation—yes, yes, we’re out there, we’re waiting, we’re waiting just for you. But now, as Michael passes his palm over its smooth surface, watching the colors undulate beneath his touch, he feels nothing, nothing at all.

How could he have been so stupid? How could he have watched the stars and thought they cared about him at all? How could he have fooled himself into thinking that he was doing to himself something any kinder than what others did to him in the name of their God?

The thing is, the pieces want to be together, and are not so easily torn apart once they’ve knit themselves back as one. Michael spends hours—a sunset, a sunrise—searching for the catch, for the seam, for the proper application of pressure. He turns his mind into a needle, a scalpel, a chisel. He pukes. He tries again.

The vertigo takes him before he succeeds; the world tilts, and Michael collapses, clutching his head, eyes squeezed tight against the horrible spinning, but still he pushes _forward _and _through, _even though his blood turns all to ice, and his lungs seize, and his heart flutters like some trapped, dying thing—

And then he’s there, curled on his side under the table, surrounded by shuddering, glittering hunks of some plastic, some metal, some secret substance that used to make his heart throb with curiosity and excitement, but now just makes him want to scream. He lays there in silence, but for the ringing in his ears, and then he unfurls himself, every muscle screaming as if he’s been in that same position a thousand atrophying years.

He spreads a blanket out on the floor and gets to work.

The first shard he touches burns him, cuts a great, shiny-pink swathe across his palm. The next one soothes the heat, but gets colder and colder the longer he touches it, until it sticks stinging to his skin. Still, he picks up every piece by hand, bearing every single scar they might want for him, because he owes them at least that much.

He used to think the pieces called to him. That they wanted to be found. That they spoke to him in whispers, in secret words, in lullabies. Maybe that was stupid, too, but they’re certainly speaking now.

Once every shard is collected, he folds up the corners of the quilt and puts it on his back. He puts it in the passenger seat and drives out into the desert, out to where the road doesn’t turn for the turquoise mines, where he has to drive off the beaten path and take his battered, faithful baby across rough ground.

Then he lays his burden in the dust, all carefully arranged, all laid out like in state, because there were people he never knew, people who died out in this heat and sand, people who died behind concrete walls at the hands of men, brothers who died surrounded by New Mexico stone.

He counts the pieces, and he’ll never really know, but he needs a number to remember and this’ll have to be enough.

He turns his back to the sun and starts to dig.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @ cosmicsolipsism  
discord @ haloud


End file.
